I think they have a lot to offer story wise. And very little in terms of being blocked by mechanics.
I was just thinking about it myself when considering the new remake of Silent Hill 2. It's mostly beloved for its story and it spends a lot of time on that, and there's of course a lot of survival-horror combat in between. But beyond that there's another horror game (and just game) staple: lots of puzzles.
The SH2 remake aimed to be very faithful so was always going to have a bunch of puzzles (Silent Hill games typically have had a separate difficulty setting just for the "riddles"). But it's one of those things that you still almost have to have, particularly as a horror for some reason.
Silent Hill 2 is actually a case where even the "obligatory" elements operate pretty well in service of its themes, but plenty of the time games have these things just to have them.
The characters, the writing, and the story are all so incredibly good. I love that game and I actually think about it a lot lol. But those "puzzles" are just inscrutable.
Silent film would like a word. Er, uh… an intertitle.
Lots of modern viewers find films made before digital editing weird, or even near-unwatchable. The editing isn’t quick enough, shot pacing feels too slow.
Acting styles have changed over the years. It can take some work to be able to enjoy film acting from decades ago.
Older special effects are an acquired taste. I’m thinking of things like pirate movies where the ships are very-obviously models in a tub of water, easy to tell no matter how good the models because the water itself looks “small” in motion.
On the music side, older music will be mono. Tons of old blues legends exist only in scratchy, terrible recordings. Older music sounds different than more recent stuff and could not have sounded like the modern kind, because they could only mix so many tracks without ruining the sound, since each down-mix meant a re-recording and a loss of quality. Newer tracks will almost always use visually-aided editing that includes adjusting vocals by eye rather than ear, which changes the way things sound a lot.
One unfortunate aspect of classic games is how dated mechanics can get. It’s a problem that music or movies don’t really have, besides maybe feeling a bit cliché.
In the case of Grim Fandango, the tank controls are a bit awkward, some puzzles are actually quite difficult and require logic that would only make sense to a point and click adventure gamer from the 90s.
It deserves to be enjoyed and remembered, just because of its sheer style and creativity.